Working on acceptance and forgiveness

[AntoniaB]

GAG these are excellent points and do give me a different view in terms of thinking how this affected him. I never did pursue the PhD at this point but I became involved in research and presenting at conferences--which I made him take me to because I didn't want to go alone. He was entirely out of his element. Then I took on the book a few years ago and that took a ton of time, because I'm not a disciplined writer who chips away a bit at a time. I procrastinate and then will go into a crazy mode where I work for several days straight on one thing only and I ignore all else when in that mode. I also talked incessantly about my job.

He is a teacher so it seemed we had that in common, but for years he would say outright that college profs were not in the "real world" and they had it so good but all they did was complain He saw me as part of a stuffy world even when I know I wasn't. When he couldn't find guy friends to hang with, I tried to get him to be friends with some of my non-pretentious, laid-back male prof friends, but he'd say things like, "I don't have anything in common with him. He has a doctorate/is a professor."

The day he left last year ironically was the day my book was published--which I had dedicated to him for his support of me. To this day he says he had nothing to do with that book. On that day, I was asked to do another book, and he said "how can you think of doing that when we have problems?" So I declined the offer only to take it up again this fall after he left me for good.

I know that for me, it wasn't the job that hurt us as a couple--it was my insecurity about the job, my anxiety about teaching when I felt that I lacked the confidence in myself to be such a public person and stand in front of people for a living. I felt I got into that job because I wanted time off with him. Not because I like the teaching part. I had terrible performance anxiety and second guessed everything I ever did and worried nonstop. THAT was what interfered with the marriage.

Now that we are finished, I faced all those old anxieties and they are gone. I have no problems with confidence about the public part of my job, and I have no anxiety anymore. I haven't had a teaching nightmare since he left.

So for me, the dynamic is already shifted because I dealt with my own issues about that job and feel in a really good place now, but it's too late because he's out of my life. It's not too late in that I won't bring those things into the next relationship, of course, but I think I need to be in a relationship with someone who isn't so thrown by "class" or "status." This comes from his family--his family never liked me because I had more education than them. I was quiet/shy. They took it as lofty superiority and would just make cracks about not being able to understand what I wrote. I sent them a copy of my book when I published it and they never even acknowledged it.

When I met my H, I wrote a diary entry that said "I am interested in H and decided today I want to be a professor." These life choices happened simultaneously. I was a good student; he was brilliant but lazy. I stayed in school and got a "better" job in his eyes. I went on to publish. He taught 8th and 9th grade. I didn't put on airs, but he acted like it meant I did better in life than he did.

Guess what the OW does for a living? She teaches English--same subject as me--in his high school. She has 4 years of experience. He has 21.

He told me a month ago that he is happy now because he feels like he has a "say in the direction that the ship steers". And in fact, he told me that he intends to take some of the settlement money and go back and get a master's degree--but he intends to go to the most worthless diploma mill of a school locally so it will be the "easiest route to a master's" because he only wants it for the income since we're not married. When he said this, I joked with him and said "I guess it's good we're not married because I could never respect someone who took the easy way to a degree by going to a diploma mill school."

So one thing that hasn't changed in me is that I can come off as high and mighty about academics--and it's seen in that statement above. I just get easily disappointed in people who have ability and intellect but who take the easy way out because I don't do that. And you know, that's a microcosm of this whole divorce. I'd have fought tooth and nail to keep this marriage. He gave up the fight. And maybe that means we can never be right for each other.

There are only two times I can think of when he won an "argument" with me, and that's the two times that he left me. I think I am someone who doesn't know how to lose, and I imagine that it can be tough to live with someone like that. Even when I lost him I held on tenaciously wanting to be right.

The lesson here is I have to keep trying to learn how to let go.